1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless communication system and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for providing unauthenticated/unregistered devices with communication service via a micro base station apparatus having whole or some of signal and data termination function running at the core network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The mobile communication system has evolved into a high-speed, high-quality wireless packet data communication system to provide data and multimedia services beyond the early voice-oriented services. Recently, various mobile communication standards, such as High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), Long Term Evolution (LTE), and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) defined in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), High Rate Packet Data (HRPD) defined in 3rd Generation Partnership Project-2(3GPP2), and 802.16 defined in IEEE, have been developed to support the high-speed, high-quality wireless packet data communication services.
Meanwhile, a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) has been developed for the subscriber to receive mobile communication service freely with a phone number in any area supporting different mobile communication technologies such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM). The SIM designed for GSM has been replaced by Universal Subscriber Identification Module (USIM) which is designed to support various supplementary services as well as voice communication function as the mobile communication system has evolved to Wideband-CDMA (WCDMA).
In order for a user to use a communication service with a device, it is necessary to insert an authentication device, such as SIM, into the device, and most of the current devices are designed not supporting wireless communication without SIM.
There is therefore a need of research to allow an unauthenticated/unregistered device, particularly having no attached authentication device such as SIM.